2008 Making Black History Past, Present, Future

13 Darkest Moments

• 13 Darkest Moments

  13 The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment BAD BLOOD
  
  Beginning in 1932, and lasting for forty years, the United States Public Health Department in Alabama conducted a medical "experiment" to study the effects of late-stage syphilis, and withheld treatment of the disease from 399 African American men. The mostly illiterate, rural and impoverished men in the study were enticed with free medical treatment, free meals and burial expenses. Yes, burial expenses. By 1969, 100 men died of the disease, and countless others unwittingly infected their wives and children with this highly contagious disease doctors told them was "bad blood." In 1997, President Bill Clinton issued a public apology for the government's role in this heinous event. (Photo by National Archives and Records Administration)

• 13 Darkest Moments

  12 The Crack Epidemic CRACK KILLS
  
  Starting in the early 1980s, a cheap, portable and highly addictive form of cocaine hit the US streets. Crack ravaged many African American inner cities with a flood of addiction, the proliferation of border babies (abandoned children in hospitals born addicted to crack), astronomical murder rates and a general blight that had not been seen before. In January 1990, Washington DC Mayor Marion Barry was caught on video tape smoking crack and arrested. The next year, Washington had the distinction of being the "murder capital of the country," with 482 dead due in large part to violence around crack. (Photos by Getty Images)

• 13 Darkest Moments

  11 D.C. Snipers: A WHITE VAN
  
  During three weeks in October, 2002, the tri-state area of Washington, DC, Maryland and Virginia was terrorized by random shootings from a high-powered rifle from a van or truck along the Capital Beltway (I-95). Two African American men, John Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, were later convicted of the crimes where 10 died and three were badly injured. Muhammad received the death penalty and 17-year-old Malvo got life imprisonment without parole."The DC Snipers" are thought to have killed 17 people all together, taking into account murders in other states. (Photos by Getty Images)

• 13 Darkest Moments

  10 1960s Riots and 1992 Riots BURN BABY BURN
  
  The streets South Central Los Angeles burned after four officers accused using excessive force on an unarmed black man were acquitted in Simi Valley, Calif. The March 3, 1991, beating of 34-year-old Rodney King, who was pulled over for speeding and hit and stungunned over 56 times on his face and body, was caught on video tape and rebroadcast thousands of times. On April 29, 2002, the intersection of Florence and Normadiedanced in violence as the LAPD -- accused for years of using brutal force against black residents in LA -- were acquitted of any wrong doing. Fifty-three people died. Roughly twenty five years earlier (1964-1971), the streets of many urban cities -- Newark, Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago, Milwaukee, Washington, DC -- also burned, as in this photo from Chicago, 1968, following the assassination of Martin Luther King. (Photo by Lee Balterman/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

• 13 Darkest Moments

  9 Mandatory Minimums: LOCKED UP
  
  Because of the high rates of violence associated with crack, federal guidelines were issued in 1986 and strengthened in 1988, giving excessive amounts of time to those arrested for crimes associated with crack cocaine -- you had to have 100 times the amount of powdered cocaine (mostly used by whites) to get the same amount of prison time as crack (at that time n mostly used by blacks). Judges were forced by law to give harsh sentences(usually at least 10 years to life) to those convicted, usually low level dealers or users. These "mandatory minimums" effectively set up a system where by the mid-90s, half of all prisons were made up of African American men and women, most for non violent offenses (blacks only make up 13 percent of the US population). One million African Americans were behind bars in 2000. (Photo by Scott Olson, Getty Images)

• 13 Darkest Moments

  8 The Atlanta Child Murders: PURE EVIL
  
  In 1979, and through the summer of 1981, 29 people were found murdered in Atlanta, Georgia. The majority of those killed were black children -- the youngest was 7-year-old LaToya Wilson, most of the victims were black boys between the ages of 9 and 15. It was a frightening time, as many of the children were abducted from the streets; many sympathizers wore green ribbons during that time in commemoration of the dead. On Feb. 29, 1982, Wayne B. Williams was convicted of two of the murders and sentenced to two life prison terms. Williams maintains his innocence. Some believe he did not commit any, or all, of the killings. (Photo by AP)

• 13 Darkest Moments

  7 Assassinations of Evers, X, King: TOO SOON
  
  After numerous attempts on his life, NAACP Field secretary Medgar Evers was shot to death in his driveway by a Ku Klux Klan member on June 12, 1963. Evers was 37 years old and left behind three children. Less than a year after leaving the Nation of Islam and starting his own group, the Organization of Afro American Unity, Malcolm X was killed in New York's Audobon Ballroom, on Feb. 21, 1965. He widowed a wife and six children. He was 39. On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated by a sniper's bullet at the Loraine Hotel in Memphis, Tenn. He left a wife, Coretta, and four children. King was 39 years old. These three prominent black leaders, all under the age of 40, with different ideologies, and within a period of five years, were killed through gun violence. King and Evers were killed by white men, Malcolm X was killed by black men. (Photo by AP(2)/Getty Images)

• 13 Darkest Moments

  6 Jim Crow: WHITES ONLY
  
  Whether by law or custom, the practice of relegating blacks to second class citizenship was known as Jim Crow. Jim Crow's daily humiliations for blacks included separate facilities for "colored," separate drinking fountains, giving up one's seat on buses and no service at restaurants. More systematic discrimination included segregation in housing, employment and schools and the denial of the right to vote. When African Americans and whites asserted their rights to fight Jim Crow during the Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968), terror tactics were used by individuals and government officials to stop this tide of change. Massive arrests, bombings, murder, attack dogs to fire hoses were used. In this photo, police are dragging away an anti-segregation demonstrator in Jackson, Miss. in May, 1963. (Photo by AP)

• 13 Darkest Moments

  5 AIDS Rates Soar: RED RIBBONS
  
  Of the nearly one million people living with AIDS in the United States today, nearly half of them are African American. At only 13% of the U.S. population, Blacks account for more HIV andAIDS cases and HIV-related deaths than any other racial/ethnic group. AIDS is making fast inroads into the black community with black women and teens making up the majority of new cases. Black women, who are most likely to be infected by heterosexual transmission, account for the majority of new AIDS cases among women (66% in 2005); and though Black teens (aged 13-19) represent only 16% of U.S. teenagers, they accounted for 69% of new AIDS cases reported among teens in 2005. Since being first identifiedin 1981, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome has killed over 211,000 African Americans through 2005. (Photo by Stephen Chernin, Getty Images)

• 13 Darkest Moments

  Scott Olson, Getty ImagesCHICAGO - JUNE 13: A photograph of Emmett Till in his casket hangs on the wall at the Chicago Historical Society June 13, 2005 in Chicago, Illinois. The "Without Sanctuary" exhibit features a collection of lynching photographs and other memorabilia. The Senate today is expected to apologize for its past failures to pass a law stop lynching, a crime that cost the lives of over 4,700 people, mostly blacks, between 1882 and 1968.